Even when provided with complex combinations of different wet and dry foods, cats are able to select and combine the foods in different amounts to achieve a consistent intake of protein, fat and carbohydrate, i.e. macronutrient intake. Published this month in the Journal of Comparative Physiology B, the research shows that cats regulate their macronutrient intake by altering their food selection despite differences in the macronutrient content, moisture level and texture of foods. The research was conducted by scientists from the WALTHAM® Centre for Pet Nutrition – the ...

Researchers from the University of New South Wales and Black Dog Institute in Sydney, Australia have used brain imaging technology to show that young people with a known risk of bipolar (but as yet have no signs of the condition) have clear and quantifiable differences in brain activity when compared to controls. "We found that the young people who had a parent or sibling with bipolar disorder had reduced brain responses to emotive faces, particularly a fearful face. This is an extremely promising breakthrough," says study leader UNSW Professor Philip Mitchell. "We ...

The species in question is the fruit fly Drosophila mauritiana, a close relative of the well known (and previously sequenced) Drosophila melanogaster that swarms around our fruit bowls in summer. Nolte and colleagues now present a complete genomic sequence, annotating it to indicate the various genes it contains. The information will naturally be extremely useful to all those who are working on this organism. But the present study goes much, much further. Schlötterer's group has recently developed powerful analytic methods for measuring the genetic variability of populations. ...

Oxidative stress is believed to cause a number of diseases. Up to now, it has been common practice to measure oxidative stress levels by determining the oxidation state of a small molecule called glutathione in cell extracts. Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been the first to discover that cells under stress deposit their oxidized glutathione in a cellular waste repository. This protects cells from oxidative stress – and questions the validity of the conventional measuring method. Cancer, Alzheimer's, arteriosclerosis– ...

Imagine a solid ball rolling down a slightly inclined ramp. What could be perceived as child's play is the focus of serious theoretical research by Manoj Chaudhury and Partho Goohpattader, two physicists from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pensylvania, USA. Their study, which is about to be published in EPJ E, has one thing in common with childhood behaviour. It introduces a mischievous idea, namely studying the effect of random noise, such as vibrations, on the ball. They found it could lower the energy barrier to set the ball in motion. The authors used a ramp with ...

A protected area network should ensure the maintenance of biodiversity, but climate is changing rapidly, thereby creating further demand for the protected area network to be efficient in preserving biota. Due to climate change species ranges are expected to move polewards, which poses challenges to the protected area network. Population changes of different bird species groups according to their habitat preferences in boreal protected areas in Finland were studied on the basis of large-scale bird censuses carried out in 1981 and in 2000. Mean temperatures rose clearly ...

Washington D.C., December 17, 2012 – A study published in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that adolescents who experienced food insecurity in the past year have a higher prevalence of mental disorders than adolescents whose families have reliable access to food. Using data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A), a group of researchers led by Dr. Katie McLaughlin, of Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, examined 6,483 adolescents aged 13-17 ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Telestroke networks that enable the remote and rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke can improve the bottom line of patients and hospitals, researchers report. A central hub hospital delivering rapid stroke diagnosis and treatment partnering with typically smaller spoke hospitals in need of those services means more patients recover better and the network – and hospitals – make money, according to a study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. "We measure stroke treatment in reduced disability and ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A research team led by scientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida have decoded the entire pathway that regulates leakiness of blood vessels — a condition that promotes a wide number of disorders, such as heart disease, cancer growth and spread, inflammation and respiratory distress. They say their findings, published online Dec. 17 in the Journal of Cell Biology, suggest that several agents already being tested for other conditions might reverse vessel leakiness. "Now that we understand a lot more about the pathway that leads to leaky blood vessels, ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Coral colonies that suffered tissue damage in The Bahamas were still producing low numbers of eggs four years after the injuries occurred, according to new research by University at Buffalo scientists. Tiny sperm-producing factories called spermaries were also in short supply. The slow recovery was a surprise, said UB geology professor Howard Lasker, PhD, who led the study on the coral species Antillogorgia elisabethae. "The really interesting finding was that four years later, these colonies were still displaying an effect," Lasker said. "They don't ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- It appears that long, arduous hours in the hospital are causing more than stress and fatigue among doctors-in-training -- they're crashing, or nearly crashing, their cars after work, according to new Mayo Clinic research. Nearly half of the roughly 300 Mayo Clinic residents polled during the course of their residencies reported nearly getting into a motor vehicle crash during their training, and about 11 percent were actually involved in a traffic accident. The study, recently published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found that residents attributed the ...

Stratum ventilation systems have been touted as a much more energy efficient system for cooling buildings such as school rooms and offices in hotter climes based on the provisions of the recent ANSI/ASHRAE 55-2010. They may also reduce the risk of the spread of airborne diseases according to a study to be published early next year in the journal World Review of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development. This approach to cooling small and medium-sized rooms in a building has come to the fore as a low-cost alternative to high-energy air-conditioning systems particularly ...

This press release is available in German. In the period of atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s significant amounts of uranium-236 were distributed world-wide. Despite this, uranium-236 has mostly eluded detection and clear attribution to this source. A team of three researchers based in Austria and Australia lead by Stephan Winkler have identified the bomb-pulse of this isotope in corals from the Caribbean Sea. Uranium is readily dissolved in seawater, and therefore is carried by ocean currents. This makes uranium-236 and ideal tool for investigating ...

This press release is available in German. The gonad is well known to be important for reproduction but also affects animal life span. Removal of germ cells – the sperm and egg producing cells – increases longevity of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms were a mystery. Now scientists at the Cologne-based Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, have discovered that germ cell removal flips a "molecular switch" that extends the life span by using components of a "developmental clock". The roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans ...

This press release is available in German. Multidrug-resistant bacteria remain a major concern for hospitals and nursing homes worldwide. Propagation of bacterial resistance is alarming and makes the search for new antimicrobials increasingly urgent. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen have now identified a potential new target to fight bacteria: the factor EF-P. EF-P plays a crucial role in the production of proteins that are essential for the virulence of EHEC or salmonellae. The researchers' findings suggest that drugs blocking ...

This press release is available in French. Researchers at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center and the University of Montreal have found a possible heredity mechanism that predisposes children to acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of blood cancer in children. According to their findings published in Genome Research, the presence of a genetic defect in the egg or sperm from which children having ALL arise may be a prerequisite for the disease to develop. A significant number of children with ALL are thought to inherit a rare PRDM9 gene ...

Scientists at the University of Arizona Cancer Center and the Moffitt Cancer Center, led by Dr. Robert Gillies, have demonstrated that an advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method can non-invasively evaluate the cellular proliferation of tumor models of breast cancer. This quantitative imaging method evaluates the diffusion of water in tumor tissue, which correlates with the growth rates of the tumor models. The results, which appear in the November 2012 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, can contribute to the development of new tumor models for cancer ...

From extreme drought to super storms, many wonder what the future holds for the climate of the eastern United States. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, does away with the guessing. Results show the region will be hotter and wetter. Joshua Fu, a civil and environmental engineering professor, and Yang Gao, a graduate research assistant, developed precise scales of cities which act as a climate crystal ball seeing high resolution climate changes almost 50 years into the future. The study found that heat waves will become more ...

New York, NY (December 17, 2012) — Are you stressed? Results of a new meta-analysis of six studies involving nearly 120,000 people indicate that the answer to that question may help predict one's risk of incident coronary heart disease (CHD) or death from CHD. The study, led by Columbia University Medical Center researchers, was published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Cardiology. The six studies included in the analysis were large prospective observational cohort studies in which participants were asked about their perceived stress (e.g., "How stressed ...

WASHINGTON, December 17, 2012 — With the holiday season a high-risk period for packing on unwanted pounds, the American Chemical Society (ACS) today posted a new video that may lend perspective on this year's battle of the bulge. Produced by the world's largest scientific society, it explains the science behind the calorie counts and other information on those Nutrition Facts Labels on food packages. Available at www.BytesizeScience.com, the video tells the story of how scientists first determined the calorie content of food in the 1800s, and how scientists determine fat, ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A new series of studies in mouse models by Mayo Clinic researchers uncovered that the aging process is characterized by high rates of whole-chromosome losses and gains in various organs, including heart, muscle, kidney and eye, and demonstrate that reducing these rates slows age-related tissue deterioration and promotes a healthier life span. The findings appear in today's online issue of Nature Cell Biology. "We've known for some time that reduced levels of BubR1 are a hallmark of aging and correspond to age-related conditions, including muscle weakness, ...

Scientists from the Structural Computational Biology Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Alfonso Valencia, together with French and American researchers, have published recently two articles in the journal Nucleic Acid Research (NAR) that introduce two new databases for studying the human genome. Living eukaryote beings are capable of generating several proteins from the information contained in a single gene. This special characteristic exists partly thanks to the alternative splicing process that selectively joins some exons (the regions ...

A leading international expert on autism at the University of Leicester has been involved in contributing to a major new study of global health. Professor Terry Brugha, of the Department of Health Sciences, is co-author of two papers in The Lancet's special issue on the Global Burden of Disease. Because of his work on Autism Epidemiology, which was used to develop one new element of these global data syntheses, Professor Brugha was a co-author at the University of Leicester on two of the reports. He said: "The most pressing issue to come out of the Global Burden of ...

More than one in every ten schoolchildren suffers from a transient tic disorder, and 1% have a particular type of tic disorder known as Tourette syndrome. In this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Andrea G. Ludolph of the Universitätsklinikum Ulm and her coauthors report on the available modes of diagnosis and treatment for these disorders (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109(48): 821). Tic disorders usually take a benign course; in about 90% of patients, the tics regress spontaneously in adolescence. Specific treatment is indicated only if the tics are severe or cause ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 17, 2012) – Rice University scientists have discovered a new way to look inside living cells and see the insoluble fibrillar deposits associated with Parkinson's disease. The combined talents of two Rice laboratories – one that studies the misfolded proteins that cause neurodegenerative diseases and another that specializes in photoluminescent probes – led to the spectroscopic technique that could become a valuable tool for scientists and pharmaceutical companies. The research by the Rice labs of Angel Martí and LauraSegatori appeared online this month ...